Second Hand Emotions
by Leslie Thoirdorchadas
Summary: People say how much she looks like Kikyou, how grateful she should be that her past incarnation had such grand powers to pass on. What if something else had been passed along as well?


_**Second Hand Emotions**_

Disclaimer: I don't own Kagome or Inu-Yasha: A Feudal Fairytale.

Summary: Flowers in the Mist.

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Kagome never believed in love. She figured, it had something to do with her parents. Daddy left, said he'd never loved mommy. Said he only stayed because she got "knocked up." She didn't understand what he meant back then. But as she grew older, she began to. She never told mommy what daddy told her. Never told Grandpa or Souta either. She didn't want to hurt them, like daddy hurt her when he told her that two brats were too much, let alone _three_. For she was a twin. She had a twin. A twin daddy took with him.

She grew up in a world where people fell in love with images, fantasies. Where they found something new to adore every day. She let herself have crushes, they didn't last very long after all. They were safe, a crush could never hurt her. Loving an image, as long as she knew it was fantasy, would never break her heart. Never make her suffer for months like mommy did when daddy left. That was when Grandpa's health began deteriorating.

He'd had to do too much. Raise a 7 year old little girl and a newborn boy. Upkeep the shrine. Pay the bills, pay for food. That was why they believed her Grandpa when he claimed she had all these ilnesses. She was a sickly child growing up, malnourished the doctors said. Her twin would steal money from daddy, come visit and give it to them. Say she wished she could stay with them because daddy and his new wife were mean. After Grandpa found bruises on her, she never came back. But money would still be mailed to them, every other week.

After that, mommy finally came back, she worked hard at the shrine, got a job and let Grandpa rest. Kagome finally stopped being the sick girl. Souta grew from a runt to a healthy toddler. The amount of money sent would begin to increase. Kagome stopped staring into bargain-store windows looking like a hungry little waif. She went back to school. Souta was never told about the problems his family went through when he was first born. He would've thought it was his fault. But nobody blamed him. Except, maybe daddy.

Kagome sighed, feeling the mist brush exposed skin as fingers brushed wild flowers. She never believed in love. She knew her crush on Inu-Yasha was based upon the image of a white knight that he represented. What little girl didn't dream of a brave white knight rescuing her from her troubles? Though in this story, the troubles were self-wrought. The brave white knight was only rescuing a memory. And the little girl, stopped believing in happy endings long ago.

But.. Still... It hadn't explained the feeling she felt upon first seeing him. A feeling of coming home, and repulsion. She snapped a flower from it's stem.

She laced the flower into the crown she was weaving. A crown fit for a princess. She knew now, what kept the love she felt from fading away completely. Even as she felt a burgeoning love and affection for another. Even as love had grown and faded for others in the past. The same reason her twisted fairytale had begun. The same reason a jaded princess kept coming back to a time choke-full of danger. The same reason her white knight could never truely decide between the flesh-and-blood, firey princess, and the cold shadow of a beautiful, kind miko.

Her incarnation. The woman whose memory she was cursed to bear for however long she would walk the lush, peaceful, homey wilds of the Sengoku Jidai. The woman whose emotions never got the chance to live or die. For _her_ life ended too young.

Kikyou, whose premature death cursed her reincarnation to forever walk with second-hand emotions.

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A.N: If her past life has such a strong influence on the way she looks and her powers and what people say she should be like... What else does it actually influence?


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